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Re: [netcdfgroup] [CF-metadata] [Hdf-forum] Detecting netCDF versus HDF5 -- PROPOSED SOLUTIONS --REQUEST FOR COMMENTS

  • To: John Caron <jcaron1129@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Subject: Re: [netcdfgroup] [CF-metadata] [Hdf-forum] Detecting netCDF versus HDF5 -- PROPOSED SOLUTIONS --REQUEST FOR COMMENTS
  • From: Stephan Hoyer <shoyer@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2016 21:43:33 -0700
A custom attribute to identify netCDF4 files sounds perfectly reasonable as
an iteration on the netCDF4 spec.

But I'd like emphasize that it's important to continue to treat netCDF4 as
a specification rather than merely whatever libnetcdf knows how to read and
write. Doing so keeps you honest and forces more careful design.

My project h5netcdf (https://github.com/shoyer/h5netcdf) is one such
reimplementation of netCDF4 on top of an HDF5 API, which has exposed a
number of bugs and edge cases in the netCDF-C and Python netCDF4 libraries.

Cheers,
Stephan